November 28, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – It was with great delight that progressive media outlets announced Twitter’s “pro-trans move”: The social media giant was formally banning “deadnaming” or “misgendering” transgender people. “Deadnaming,” it turns out, refers to mentioning the previous name of a transgender person: so mentioning the name “Bruce Jenner” would be “deadnaming,” and referring to Jenner as a “he” would be misgendering. Both are now forbidden.
Trans activists, who have been incredibly successful in their campaign to coerce people into using language that affirms the ideological premises of their movement, are celebrating this move: Pink News stated triumphantly that this sort of language is unacceptable, and has often been used “on Twitter to insult and erase trans people’s identities and right to exist.” One trans activist was quoted saying, “Excellent news everyone: Twitter has finally updated their TOS such that misgender/deadnaming a trans person is against the site’s rules. Happy hunting.”
The purge of heretics has already begun, with radical feminist Meghan Murphy getting shoved off the platform for questioning transgender orthodoxy (and noting its inherent ideological opposition to traditional feminism.) Trans activists frequently accuse those who disagree with them of attempting to “erase” them in order to justify violence against their opponents, Murphy noted, and physical altercations have already taken place between trans activists and feminists.
Murphy, incidentally, has been consistently targeted by trans activists, and has now been permanently banned from Twitter for making points like this: “[M]y issue isn’t with ‘transgender people,’ per se, but, rather, with men. There is a reason certain spaces are sex-segregated—such as change rooms, bathrooms, women’s shelters, and prisons: because these are spaces where women are vulnerable, and where male predators might target women and girls. These are spaces where women and girls may be naked, and where they do not want to be exposed to a man’s penis, regardless of his insistence that his penis is actually ‘female.’” If such ideas are permitted to proliferate, people might see how reasonable they are—which is precisely why trans activists want them silenced.
On Twitter, the probably soon-to-be-banned mathematician Eric Weinstein, who is himself a liberal, also objected strenuously to the new Terms of Service:
There’s something VERY suspicious about the social media platforms & their new treatment of Trans issues. I now believe it’s being fashioned cynically as the preferred weapon with which to hunt those who will never give a single inch of scientific ground to political pressure.
This banning of “deadnaming” is preposterous. We need to honor work attributed before transition! How does this differ from our need to discuss scientific papers published under a “maiden name”? Or contributions before a Muslim name is chosen (e.g. Cassius Clay, Cat Stevens).
This makes being a historian impossible. Further treating Trans M/F *exactly* the same as born M/F would be medical malpractice. Etc. So what you’re really doing is saying that biology, history, science and medicine are only allowed to exist at the whim of political activists.
This is like Caligula making his horse a senator. Any competent independent person knows that if they don’t treat the horse as a senator, they will be disappeared. So it’s done to select against strong independent clear headed thinkers by forcing them to identify themselves.
Weinstein is precisely right—Twitter is quite literally banning historical facts. Consider this: Under Twitter’s new rules, it is forbidden to post the following statement: “Bruce Jenner won the men’s decathlon at the 1976 Olympics.” Of course, it would be factually incorrect to state that Caitlyn Jenner secured victory at a men’s event, and Bruce hadn’t even conceptualized himself as Caitlyn yet. But under the new Orwellian rules governing one of mankind’s primary methods of communication—social media—these facts are now unsayable.
Not all trans activists are on board with this new state of affairs. One tweeted in disbelief that, “Twitter is now suspending trans people who acknowledge their own birth sex. Yes, this is true, not speculation. I, like every other ‘trans woman’, am biologically male. I, like many other ‘trans women’, take hormones to make myself look more female. I, like few other ‘trans women’, have had surgery to ease body dysmorphia. We are what we are. Twitter can’t suspend reality.” They can, however, suppress it quite effectively. Trans activists, of course, are already hunting down heretics to make life easier for the censors over at Twitter headquarters.
Twitter’s new rules are simply a sign of things to come. The social media monopolies now collectively possess the ability to tip the scales towards their preferred ideological allies, and they have given every indication that LGBT activists and social “progressives” are in. Christians, pro-lifers, and an assortment of old-guard liberals (including a few beleaguered feminists who, like Murphy, are questioning many of their previous assumptions at the realization that only those on the Right are willing to defend their right to speak), on the other hand, are very much out.
Social media now connects much of the world, and over the next few years, I expect we will see more aggressive, wide-scale purges that seek to eliminate those of us with traditionalist values from these platforms by way of new rules that are designed to eliminate our voices. I’d like to say that I have the answer to what we should do to combat this or stop it, but I simply don’t have one. As long as the social media giants have the monopoly on communication, they control the narrative—and it does not appear likely that this will end well for those who have a narrative of their own.
